MSI Piecing Together the Puzzle

NEW YORK—It’s unclear whether or not Jeff Riback is fond of assembling puzzles of 500 pieces or more, but it’s easy to see the president and CEO of Metro Seliger Industries (MSI) is a big fan of the three-piece interlocking variety.

As of press time, the Manhattan-based (and soon to be Carlstadt, NJ, headquartered) company, part of communications giant Havas Advertising, was set to close on a deal that would add Data Communique to the fold.

MSI had reached a definitive agreement that would absorb Data Communique, a specialist in electronic publishing and customized document solutions, only a few months after its acquisition of Waldon Press, a typesetting, web and sheetfed printing company.

“Each piece of the puzzle fits together,” Riback notes of the acquisitions. “We have put together a business that offers front-end document publishing, production and distribution. The Waldon piece is the output engine portion of the model.”

Waldon gives MSI added print firepower, according to Riback, in areas such as traditional web and sheetfed printing. Add in Data Communique’s document publishing services—and its focus in the mutual fund industry—and MSI’s mailing and fulfillment distribution end (along with sheetfed printing and digital on-demand printing and personalization capabilities), and the puzzle is complete.

“We can take a customer’s idea and turn it into a new, formatted document, produce that document and distribute it to our customer’s audience,” Riback says.

The Waldon deal was concluded at the end of this past summer while the Data Communique acquisition was slated to be finalized in late November. Negotiations for both companies lasted approximately four months.

The company’s production facilities will now be concentrated into the new location in Carlstadt, NJ. The move was already underway, as the mailing portion of MSI was relocated to the new 60,000-square-foot plant. Riback stresses that the company will still maintain a New York office for functions including sales, customer service and typesetting.